Plagiarism, the chain you put on your own mind

First of all, I want to make a short introduction of an article I read recently. It is a short story written by Mike Rose.In the article, Mike Rose states a story that Marita, a new student of UCLA, was accused of plagiarism during her first writing assignment. According to the author,  Marita had some difficulty finishing the argument on the topic of creativity. Therefore, she turned into the encyclopedia and referred from it without proper quotation. The arguer presents fully understanding of Marita's circumstance that she is writing beyond her acknowledge. This reminds him of his own experience when he was overwhelmed and found himself incapable to handle the material he cited.  In the end, Mike Rose concludes that Marita came cross a problem which many other students are facing, but her practice cannot be accepted by the academics and challenged the authority of the school's law.

Plagiarism, is no different than stealing, as I was told again and again. It is emphasized to another level from my first day in the Ohio State University. Several cases were presented to inform us that how serious the result can be if you were caught of plagiarism on the International Student Orientation. In my opinion, it is astonishing that plagiarism is still considered as a big problem at this academic level.

The school makes it quite clear that plagiarism is not allowed and punishments would follow. Then, why are there still people doing this? The voices you can hear from both the video and the article of Mike Rose are "I did not know I am plagiarizing.""I made a stupid decision.""I regret so much." However, I think we should go beyond the fact and look at it from a overall view.

First of all, can a student be accused of plagiarism without precaution? It is possible but at a very low chance that what you have written by yourself is exactly the same with a published work.It is almost a miracle,isn't it? As the case stated in Marita's case, most of the cases of plagiarism happen when students are referring to other articles. If there is no referring, there will be no plagiarism. Is it possible then? I am afraid not. Once I was reading an article about human race civilization. In the article, the author pointed out the importance of library in the broadcasting and inheriting of knowledge. The library is defined as all source of language work including books and oral presentations. "If I have seen further(than Descartes), it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants(Isaac Newton)" The nature of the accumulation of knowledge is that we need to gain new point of view on others' finished pieces. As a result, referring is unavoidable. When you are bringing others' work, you should know that you are at a chance of plagiarism and the only solution for it is proper paraphrasing.

Further more, how could a student fail in the process of paraphrasing and be accused of plagiarism?  In Mike Rose's story, we can learn that Marita has the self-consciousness that she was utilizing the material from the encyclopedia, but she failed to understand what she is using. What she did is simply bring the stuff directly into her piece.  As Mike Rose said, people cheating always have no idea of the material he is using. The work scraped together is just like "little fleckes of knowledge sticking to the fiber of the broom". What is more, the thing you pasted on your essay does not equal to what is gained in your head. Simple copying with out assimilating and expressing is not the way we learn, neither the way we gain knowledge.

In my opinion, the right way to prevent students from this kind of trouble, is not only present them the severe results after they get caught. People always have fluke mind and will challenge the authority of the academic conventions. We should let students know that, when one is behind schedule and decides to cheat on the paper, it is not the professor or the school but himself being betrayed, because he give up the original goal when he first started. That is to learn, to gain, to sublimate, and this cannot achieved by plagiarism.